The Caliban Chronicles: Act I
by Hostile17sKitten
Summary: Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. Both of them made promises to Buffy. On the road to redemption, it's the journey that matters, rather than the destination. **Chapter 6 up!
1. after the fall

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, Scene i**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes: **Starts directly after the final scene of_ The Gift_, and goes off-canon from the middle of _Bargaining, Part 2. _What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful...?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. A brand new Big Bad wants a piece of all that shiny green energy. When a secret society sets their sights on Dawn, their struggle to handle Life After Buffy turns into a quest to keep their promises to her alive. From Sunnydale to Tokyo, it's the journey that counts, not the destination. Chapter 1 of a much larger piece.

**Author's Notes:** I'm a new fan who just finished both BtVS and AtS about six months ago, and this is the very first chapter of my very first go at any Whedonverse fan fiction. This isn't going to be a short piece - I've already finished most of part 1, which will be about 8 or 9 chapters long; if all goes as projected, parts 2 and 3 will be even longer. I'm having fun writing it - but whether I continue posting it here will depend a lot on whether people want to read it. I'm new; be kind, but be honest. Any and all constructive feedback is appreciated!

**Chapter Warnings: **Profanity. Mild violence. Garden variety teen angst. Also, I like Shakespeare. Fair warning for future chapters.

**Dedications: **For Paola, who broke me of my irrational prejudice and created a monster. Team Spike Forever, girlie; this one is all for you.

* * *

**Act I, Scene i:** after the fall

Afterwards, they all try to be strong for her.

Willow calls an ambulance. Giles calls the morgue. Tara holds her through the initial, blinding shock of denial, shelters her as the world comes crashing down around them and her sister's corpse cools on a pile of rubble. Xander cares for Willow and Tara and Anya and Dawn put together; despite all his day-to-day bluster and complaints, he is always the calmest of them all in the face of great tragedy.

Nobody notices what happens to Spike. One minute he's there, sunk to his knees and sobbing like a lost child, and the next minute he is gone without a trace.

The first night, she spends at the hospital; the cuts only take thirty stitches to close, but she's lost a lot of blood, and the doctors insist on keeping her overnight. All of the Scoobies stay with her, bound together by grief; if they go home now, real life will start again. Houses and apartments will look just the same as they did the day before, and her things will be in them – a sweater tossed over the back of a chair, a mug she didn't get around to washing, that DVD that she keeps forgetting to pick up from Xander's or Willow's or Giles' – but she will not. Life without Buffy begins the second that they disperse, and so for the first night they do not. Xander and Anya sleep in the waiting room. Tara and Willow sleep beside her, crammed onto her narrow hospital bed. Giles wanders between the two, staring into shadows and looking far too calm to truly be calm. They huddle together through the darkness like kittens from the same litter, lost in the face of the inevitable dawn.

Nobody knows how Spike passes the night. Nobody even thinks about it, Dawn included. She lies awake between the two witches and watches her sister die behind her eyes, again and again and again.

The second night, everyone talks. Drinks hot chocolate or Giles' best bourbon, and talks about their feelings. They philosophize, commiserate, tell the jokes that Buffy would have wanted them to tell to keep each other strong. One by one, they all take her aside.

"It's okay to cry," Xander tells her, as Dawn leans tearless but so very tired against his chest in the kitchen.

"It's okay to feel numb," Tara tells her, with the soft, unimposing wisdom that only Tara can offer. Then she takes Dawn's hand in hers on the porch steps, and they watch the stars together in silence for a while.

"It's all right to feel a little lost right now, Dawn. I daresay that we all do," Giles tells her, and when he puts his hand on her shoulder, she covers it with her own. "Leave the technicalities up to me; I'll take care of everything." And he will. Of course he will. Giles is the one who guided Buffy through insurance policies and funeral arrangements and all the other finite details of their mother's death; he will do the same for Dawn. She has no real decisions to make right now.

After all, she's only fourteen.

Just a kid.

They will not really grieve until she goes to bed. They will not show her the parts of their pain that don't feel fit for a child's eyes. Because she isn't a child, Dawn knows that, and because she is still very young, a part of her hates them for it. With her mother and sister both gone and her father never really there to begin with, the Scoobies are her family, now – and as surrogate families go, she couldn't ask for better.

But right now, what Dawn really needs is a friend. She goes upstairs long before she is tired, turns off her lights and sits on her bed and imagines breaking Glory's neck with her own two hands. Imagines downing half of Giles' whiskey and putting her fists through the walls. Imagines torching the house, hitchhiking to the beach, casting a spell to bring her sister back to life. She is not thinking anything that the others aren't thinking, but because she is fourteen and Buffy's little sister and a mystical key from another dimension who everyone just gave up everything in order to protect, she has to sit up here and think these things by herself. There is no one to spill her guts to who won't be scared or sorry or somewhere in between about what's going on in her head.

The third night, when it all gets to be too much for her, Dawn does what her sister would do.

She goes and punches Spike in the face.

The night air is a relief as she climbs out her window and down the trellis, cooling the tears on her too-hot cheeks and brushing her tangled hair back from her face. She storms through the dark streets of Sunnydale like a reckless drunk, fully aware that anything could jump out of the shadows to eat her at any moment – and that this time, there would be no Buffy to save her. She'd be just another stupid girl dying in a gutter somewhere – another stupid, dumb, pointless victim of the Hellmouth. By the time she gets to the graveyard where they buried Buffy this morning, she feels like what she really is – a deadly, crackling ball of poison-green energy, outfitted with teenage hormones and carrying the weight of the world on slender, useless human shoulders.

She doesn't even bother stopping by the crypt. She knows exactly where he'll be.

Spike hears her coming. How could he not? She's making enough noise to wake the dead, half sobbing through gritted teeth, stumbling over urns and tree roots and batting aside foliage with angry fists. Buffy's grave is under a willow tree in the prettiest part of the graveyard, all dappled with California sunlight during the day. At night, though, it's just like any other grave – cold and dark and lonely and a piss poor substitute for someone you love. He's sitting with his back against the headstone, dried blood still spiderwebbing one side of his face and a bottle of whiskey between his knees. He doesn't speak a word as she stumbles to a halt over him, but when he looks up at her his eyes say it all.

Dawn cocks back her arm the way that people do in the movies, and swings for all she's worth.

The first blow probably hurts her more than it hurts Spike; her knuckles glance off his skull, wrenching her wrist with the force of it. She nearly loses balance – kicks him as she stumbles and nearly apologizes, then rocks back and hits him again. This time, she connects clean and solid with his cheek, and his head snaps aside with a sharp crack against the gravestone. Spike doesn't even flinch. Doesn't cry, isn't shocked. Doesn't try to make it better. Spike is a soulless demon who survived the fall her sister didn't, and compared to him she really is just a weak, stupid little girl. She can hit him all night, and it won't hurt either of them. She imagines Glory, imagines that creepy doctor, imagines her own face. Swings again, and again. Screams, cries, bloodies her knuckles on his teeth and pulls all the muscles in her own arm before she falls sobbing into his.

Spike never once lifts a hand, until he has to catch her.

He smells like leather and whiskey and blood, and there is nothing warm or safe about his embrace. Like everything else in this cemetery, he is dead – but he clings to her as fiercely as she clings to him, hurting her a little because he is as strong as any other demon, but the chip doesn't fire because Spike isn't trying to cause pain, and because Dawn doesn't care. She loves him for hanging on so tightly, for needing her back and hurting _with_ her. They sob on each other's shoulders and bleed in each other's arms, and it is really brutal and brutally real in the way that both teenagers and vampires need life to be, sometimes.

When they are both calm enough to breathe, they breathe. They don't talk about it. For a very long time, they don't talk about anything. They just hold on to each other in the dark, and Spike listens to Dawn's heart beat while she listens to his not beat. After the initial shock of it, the silence inside of him is strangely soothing.

"You're lucky you're dead," she finally tells him.

"Why's that?" Spike's voice is hoarse – whether from disuse, screaming, or a combination of the two, Dawn can't be sure.

"You fell off a fucking tower. If you weren't already dead, you'd be gone too."

"Yeah. Lucky me."

"I'm serious." Dawn tightens her grip on his neck. "Don't go. I'm not ready for you to not be here."

"Okay," says Spike, like it's her words and not something else that convinces him, in the end. Right now, she'd like to think that's true, so she lets herself believe it.

They lapse back into silence, and Dawn doesn't know when she falls asleep – one minute she's lying against his shoulder and watching the willow branches wave in the wind, and the next she's lying in a surprisingly comfortable bed, with a sore arm and no concept of time. Spike's crypt is always dark, and the makeshift bedroom beneath it is darker still; there is no sun here to tell her if it's morning or night.

_ Buffy is dead._ It's the first thing that occurs to her, every time she wakes up from sleep or snaps back from her own thoughts or doesn't have a task to distract her. Waking up in the house she grew up in, it hits her in the gut like a ton of bricks – but here in this place, it doesn't seem so bad. There is still no meaning for it, but at least there is context. Sleeping under the same ground where her sister is buried, Dawn knows peace for the first time in days.

Spike's here, of course. He's curled up comfortably close beside her, like a big brother or a best friend or maybe even a boyfriend, though she's never had one of her own to know for sure about the latter. He breathes in his sleep, just like anyone else. For a moment Dawn wonders at that. What makes him do it?

What makes him do anything?

He's a master vampire. He's a lost soul. He's the monster who loved her sister with the passion of a thousand men and the common sense of a goldfish. He's something older than it looks and younger than it thinks and only half what it seems to be, just like her – and just like her, he has no idea how to handle this.

Dawn turns over, shuts her eyes, and snuggles back against him – and Spike just sighs, throws an arm over her like he does it every night and curls around her like a temperate but affectionate comma. Sleepily, she wonders if this is how he slept with Drusilla, or maybe some human woman long since dead. She has no idea who William the Bloody was before he became what he is now. He started out human and now he isn't; she didn't start out human, and now she is. The world is senseless and fucked up and they are both here in it, and neither one hurts by the rules, and both of them just want to rest in peace for a little while. She shuts her eyes again, not really caring whether it is day or night, and goes back to sleep in the arms of a dead man.

This is how Dawn and Spike become friends.


	2. all that we see and seem

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, Scene ii**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes: **Starts directly after the final scene of_ The Gift_, and goes off-canon from the middle of _Bargaining, Part 2. _What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful...?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. A brand new Big Bad wants a piece of all that shiny green energy. When a secret society sets their sights on Dawn, their struggle to handle Life After Buffy turns into a quest to keep their promises to her alive. From Sunnydale to Tokyo, it's the journey that counts, not the destination. Chapter 2 of a much larger piece.

**Author's Notes:** Part 1, Chapter 2 of 10. Because I can't resist redeeming Spike, and maturing Dawn into something more than a teenage brat. I'm new; help me out! Tell me what you think, for better or for worse.

**Chapter Warnings: **Profanity. Scooby derision. Angst.

**Dedications: **For Paola, who broke me of my irrational prejudice and created a monster. Team Spike Forever, girlie; this one is all for you.

* * *

**Act I, Scene ii:** all that we see and seem

Even in her dreams, Buffy is never there - she's always down on the ground, somewhere else, still fighting. Alive. She's never up there on top of the tower, the way she really was, and she never jumps the way she really did. Dawn isn't sure whether she should be sad that she never gets to see her, or grateful that she doesn't have to watch. Would one more look at her sister's face be worth reliving the moment when her feet left the platform? She doesn't think so - she can still see it in her mind's eye all to clearly, and that's bad enough.

Instead, she dreams about the chilly wind, the bite of the ropes around her wrist and the sick feeling in her own stomach. Dreams about moonlight on industrial steel and the feeling of rust between her toes, and Doc with his glassy reptilian gaze, looking her over like a fly snared in a spider's web. Dreams about the first familiar face she's seen in days, and sometimes shouts the name again in her sleep.

_Spike!_

In the dreams, no matter how close Doc comes with his knife, time will always stretch itself out until he gets there. He'll climb up the ladder and saunter out onto the walkway, surefooted as a cat. How he manages it is anyone's guess. He's just Spike. He just does.

_Doesn't a fella stay dead when you kill him?_

_Look who's talking. _She's never sure if it is her or Doc who says it; it could be either one of them, or both, or neither. Maybe it's only something that she thought in the moment, embedded in her subconscious like a shard of glass and bleeding into the dreamscape. Spike's balance is perfect; he doesn't need guard rails. Below them, the ground reels, drops away to a thousand feet instead of fifty - the more Dawn looks down, the farther it gets. Spike never looks down. Not even once.

_C'mon, Doc - let's you and me have a go._ Like maybe Doc just hit on Buffy down at The Bronze, and he's looking to take things outside with him. Not like Dawn's life is on the line. Not like one wrong step could send him over the edge.

_I… do have a prior appointment._

_This won't take long._

In the dreams, she's not always wearing that horrible dress. Sometimes she's wearing her pajamas, or her dress for the dance, or the cool new pair of jeans that she was just dreaming about buying a minute ago. Spike always looks the same, all black leather and tousled hair. He never once throws an arm out for balance; even if Dawn's arms weren't bound that way, she'd still be holding them out to the sides, or holding onto the nearest thing that looks solid.

_No. I don't imagine it will._

As long as Spike is here, there is hope. As long as Spike is here, Dawn has a champion.

As long as Spike is here, Buffy won't have to be.

She'll stay on the ground.

_You don't come near the girl, Doc._

Somewhere else.

_I don't smell a soul anywhere on you. Why do you even care?_

Still fighting.

_I made a promise to a lady._

Alive.

And then Dawn wakes up.


	3. blessed are the peacemakers

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, Scene iii**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes: **Starts directly after the final scene of_ The Gift_, and goes off-canon from the middle of _Bargaining, Part 2. _What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful...?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. A brand new Big Bad wants a piece of all that shiny green energy. When a secret society sets their sights on Dawn, their struggle to handle Life After Buffy turns into a quest to keep their promises to her alive. From Sunnydale to Tokyo, it's the journey that counts, not the destination.

**Author's Notes:** Part 1, Chapter 3 of 10. Because I can't resist redeeming Spike, and maturing Dawn into something more than a teenage brat. I'm new; help me out! Tell me what you think, for better or for worse.

**Chapter Warnings: **Profanity. Scooby derision. Angst.

**Dedications: **For Paola, who broke me of my irrational prejudice and created a monster. Team Spike Forever, girlie; this one is all for you.

* * *

**Act I, Scene iii:** blessed are the peacemakers

* * *

"He's a monster," Giles reminds her, and opens the dusty old Watcher's tome to the page on William the Bloody. "He's killed two slayers and twenty-four council members in the past hundred and twenty years - not to mention hundreds upon hundreds of innocent people. That chip in his head doesn't change what he is; all that stands between him and our untimely deaths is a bit of silicon and wiring. Don't put too much faith in him, Dawn."

"He's a pervert," Xander reminds her, measuring boards to repair the fence where a pack of Droxi demons knocked it down the other night, laughing like jackals and swarming the back porch in a wave of purple eyes and pointy teeth. Xander had shouted while Willow and Tara had debated, fingers flying through spell books in search of a solution. It had been Spike who rolled his eyes and improvised a flamethrower out of his Zippo and a can of cooking spray, singing a few of them crispy and driving the others off into the night, and lighting himself a cigarette off the smoldering remains. "Remember what he did to Buffy, with the chains and the zapping and all the head games? The guy's more twisted than a car wreck. The day that chip comes out of his head is the day we all start calling him Dusty - so don't get too attached to him."

"He's… lost, Dawn," Tara tells her, with a sad little smile that is soft and gentle and true, just like the rest of her. Tara doesn't hate Spike, which is one of the million things Dawn loves about her. She fluffs the pillows on Dawn's bed, smooths out the soft red blanket folded at the end. "Something tells me that whoever he is now, he didn't start out bad - but that person is lost, now. Without a soul, it's the demon who runs the show. We're only seeing this side of him because he doesn't have any other choice."

It's only Willow who stands up for him, standing in the doorway of the kitchen so that no one can leave the room. "He's a vampire, and he's kind of an idiot - but he's also done a lot to help us. And help is something that we need right now, guys. This Buffybot plan should work, but it's not going to be enough in the long run." Her eyes flicker around the room, and slide away nervously when they get to Dawn. "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna need Spike. He likes Dawn, at least - and if we promise him blood in exchange for his help, that should keep him around for a while."

"You want us to start a vampire food stamp program for Captain Peroxide?" Xander is washing wood dust off his hands, shoulders hunched over the sink. "Count me out. It's bad enough having him around in the first place - I'm not watching him_ eat_."

"He's got a microwave," Dawn points out, trying to sound calm and reasonable and adult-like. "He could bring it back to his crypt. Like take out."

"Do me a favor, Dawnie." Xander shuts off the sink and straightens up with a shudder. "Never,_ ever _eat anything that has been in his microwave."

Tara shrugs a little. "Dawn's got a point. I mean… he does have to eat, right? And it's not like he can hurt us, with the chip in his head."

"And he does like me," Dawn adds, before Xander can cut in. " I know that he's a monster and a pervert and a demon and all, but he's been really cool to me these past couple of weeks."

Xander shoots her a cloudy, protective look, but all he says is, "Yeah, well, all I'm saying is that Spike's idea of 'help' isn't always so helpful."

"I disagree. Spike can be very helpful," Anya puts in, in the same cheerfully optimistic voice she uses to talk about money. "Remember that time that he punched Tara in the face?"

"That hurt," Tara points out.

"But it proved that you aren't a demon," Anya reasons. "That was helpful."

"It also proved that Spike is an asshole," Xander adds.

"I think we can all agree that Spike's methodology leaves a lot to be desired." Willow has stepped into her new, implicit role as Scooby ringleader with the sort of grace and diplomacy that Buffy never had the patience for. "But like him or not, we kinda need him on our side right now. I'll talk to him tomorrow about helping us patrol regularly - I think I've got enough time between anthropology and modern lit to scoot over to the cemetery."

"I can do it," Dawn volunteers. "I've got nothing else to do, after school."

"The word 'homework' springs to mind." Xander ruffles her hair affectionately, but the same gesture that used to make her feel older and accepted now makes her feel young and misunderstood. "And anyway, you shouldn't be hanging out over there. It's not what…" Dawn knows that he wants to say something about Buffy, but he doesn't. "It's not a good idea."

"He's not going to hurt me."

"Other things might."

"He wouldn't let them."

"Dawn, look, we don't really know—" Xander is about to start in, but Willow clears her throat and gives him one of her not-so-subtle Willow looks, and he subsides with an awkward grumble.

"Don't really know what?" Dawn looks at each of them in turn, but all they do is look at each other instead.

"We don't really know what Spike would or wouldn't do, without that chip." Willow is the one to finally cover for all of them. "We all just want you to be careful, okay? Tell him that there's free blood in it for him, and all the demons he can kill."

* * *

"There's free blood in it for you," Dawn finds herself saying the next day. "And all the demons you can kill." In truth, Willow's argument has a lot of merit; Spike can be loyal, but he is rarely selfless. She sits down on the edge of his bed, where he's lying with his ankles crossed and his fingers laced behind his head.

"And I suppose I should be… what? Overwrought with gratitude?" He snorts derisively at the ceiling. "Please. It's not as though I need their charity."

Dawn shrugs. "I don't need a laptop - but it would sure make my life easier. Besides - then we'd get to hang out all the time." Instead of waiting for him to look at her, she stretches out on the bed alongside him and looks at the ceiling, too. "That's mostly what they want you to do, you know. Help them beat up demons - and babysit me." She tries to mimic Spike's snort, but it doesn't sound half as derisive as his. "Like I need a babysitter. What I _need_ is a break from everyone smothering me."

"They're just trying to keep you safe."

"Well, then you're the best of both worlds - all of the safety, none of the smothering. I mean, you do like hanging out with me, don't you?"

Spike cuts her a sidelong look without turning his head, then flicks his eyes back to the ceiling. "'Course I do," he mutters. "It's the rest of them I'm not so fond of."

"You like Tara okay, right?" Dawn presses.

Spike shrugs reluctantly. "Glinda's not a bad sort, I guess."

"And Willow stood up for you, today." This time, Spike does turn his head, eyeing her incredulously. "Well, okay, so she called you an idiot - you_ do_ act like one sometimes, don't make that face at me - but she also talked about how much you've done to help us, and She was going to come over here and talk to you herself, today, but I told her that I'd come instead."

Spike studies her from the adjacent pillow, his features guarded and difficult to read. Finally, he asks, "Why?"

"Because I wanted to be the one to ask you." There are still dark circles under his eyes, she notes, and his cheekbones cut even sharper than usual. "They all think that I'm just a kid - but when it comes to you, they're the ones who act childish." Her throat tightens despite herself, and she looks back up at the ceiling. "They weren't… up there. With us. You know?"

She can feel his eyes slide away; Spike is a good enough friend not to watch her right now. "I know," he says softly.

"And they_ don't_ know. They don't get what happened, not really - but you do, and I do, and that's why it's me asking you to do this. You need to eat, Spike. You're getting thin."

"Says the girl who can barely finish a meal nowadays."

"I haven't been hungry."

"Neither have I."

Dawn sighs. "We are both pretty messed up, aren't we."

"Emotional shipwrecks," Spike agrees.

"I ate the hamburger you bought me last night," she points out. "I'm just trying to look out for you, too. Will you at least think about it?"

"No - because I don't have to. Made a promise, didn't I? Just because_ they_ don't think it was real doesn't mean that I'm going back on it." Now it is Spike's turn to sigh. "I just hate the idea of being the Scoobies' bitch - I mean, if all they're going to do is treat me like dirt, they can keep their charity and go fuck themselves." His voice sounds a little tighter than usual, too, but Dawn can be just as good a friend as he can; she doesn't look at him, even though she wants to. "I've got enough shit to be getting on with as it is, and I'm not about to take any more of theirs."

"They can't afford to give you too much shit - they need your help." Dawn doesn't bother sugar-coating the truth; both she and Spike fully appreciate the bitterness of their situations. "They're scared, Spike. They don't know what to do now, either."

"That makes all of us."

"You could really use the blood - and I could really use more time with you."

"Already said I'll do it."

"It's not being their bitch. It's being my friend."

"I know." Spike's hand is cool and smooth as the stone ceiling above them; he slips it into hers without looking, and squeezes. "I was up there too, remember?"

This is how Spike and the Scoobies become allies.


	4. 10 things buffy never knew about spike

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, Scene iv**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes: **Starts directly after the final scene of_ The Gift_, and goes off-canon from the middle of _Bargaining, Part 2. _What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful...?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. A brand new Big Bad wants a piece of all that shiny green energy. When a secret society sets their sights on Dawn, their struggle to handle Life After Buffy turns into a quest to keep their promises to her alive. From Sunnydale to Tokyo, it's the journey that counts, not the destination.

**Author's Notes:** Part 1, Chapter 4 of 9(?). Because I can't resist redeeming Spike, and maturing Dawn into something more than a teenage brat. I'm new; help me out! Tell me what you think, for better or for worse.

**Chapter Warnings: **Profanity. Scooby derision. Angst. Faint hints of what's to come for Dawn and Spike.

**Dedications: **For Paola, who broke me of my irrational prejudice and created a monster. Team Spike Forever, girlie; this one is all for you.

* * *

**Act I, Scene iv:** 10 things buffy never knew about spike

Once, Dawn asked Buffy what color Spike's eyes were, and Buffy said she didn't know. At the time, Dawn found it odd. How could you spend that much time locked in death glares with someone and never even notice the color of their eyes? Now, Dawn knows that what Buffy didn't know about Spike could fill a book.

Buffy never knew that Spike could cook, but strangely enough he can. He can make spaghetti and pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches with some kind of weird English pickle relish that Dawn has grown to love. He never eats vegetables himself, but he slices cucumbers and tomatoes and carrots with the same adept confidence as he slices throats. She was stunned the first time that he made her a salad, but she finished every bite of it without any of the protests that she might have given Tara or Willow. Since then, he's fed her something green every day.

Buffy never knew that Spike was educated, but even more strangely enough he is. He can conjugate Latin verbs and do long division in his head and recite most of Shakespeare's sonnets from memory. He is a comfortingly consistent presence amidst Dawn's piles of homework in the evening, a sarcastic, undead encyclopedia, smoking too many cigarettes and drawing diagrams of great historical battles for her in the dusting of ash on the table top. When she left her copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ in the library the night before her essay was due, Spike vanished for half an hour and came back with a bloodstained yet well-preserved first edition. "Spill on that, and it's coming out of your hide," he warned her, and moved her glass of cherry Kool Aid to the other side of the table. Then he sat down with her and asked her questions about her thesis until her answers filled the four required pages and then some. Dawn got a B+ on the paper, and Spike called her teacher an illiterate ponce for not giving her an A.

Buffy never knew that Spike is incredibly good at styling hair. Neither does Dawn, until the night of her spring formal, when a dramatic battle with her curling iron nearly ends in tears and relocation plans. "I used to do it for Dru all the time," he explains to her, perching himself on the back of the couch like an extremely graceful vulture and sitting her down between his knees. "Spent hours dressing it up for balls and such, or just to keep her calm. She liked to 'watch' in the mirror – always swore that she could see her own reflection. You wanted curls, yeah?"

"Yeah," says Dawn. And then, "Do you miss her?"

"Who, Dru? 'Course I miss her." Spike talks around the cigarette in his mouth, keeping both hands free for combs and clips and curling irons. His fingers smell like nicotine and grave dust and now hair mousse, but they're cool and steady and surprisingly adept. "We were a good match, Dru and me. She was crazy. I was lucky. Neither of us were exactly what you'd call planners."

Dawn thinks about her sister, who was crazy and lucky and never had the luxury of being a planner, either. "You tried to kill her, that one time." But she doesn't say which time because she won't say the name because neither of them can, yet. They can talk about Dru, but not about Buffy.

Behind her, Spike grooms his fingers feather-light through her hair to loosen the curls before piling them atop her head. "Yeah, well," he says, tugging one down to lick at the back of her neck, another one down to frame her face. "Nobody's perfect." Then he hands her a mirror, and Dawn finds a perfect Victorian lady looking back at her, blue eyes wide beneath a carefully cascaded tumble of waves and spirals. The gentleman who dressed it for her is also the monster who has tried to kill everyone she loves at some point or another, and does not cast a reflection.

Buffy never knew that Spike could dance – but that very same night, after Andy Patterson ditches her for Laura Watts at the dance because Dawn won't let him grab her ass on the dance floor, Spike picks her up early and lets her cry all the way home and then teaches her to waltz in the back yard. "_This_ is real dancing," he tells her, spinning her gracefully past Joyce's favorite azalea bush. "This, or a good mosh pit." He's strong enough to handle most of her weight on his own, and Dawn feels light as air on her feet, like a little girl dancing with her father. She lays her cheek against Spike's chest, and he lets her, even though it's not good form for a waltz.

"Will you teach me how to mosh, next?"

"Mind your head, use your elbows, and don't be afraid to throw your weight backwards. I'll show you sometime when you're not wearing heels." Spike ruffles a few of her curls loose with a hand that feels anything but dead and evil. "Next time, you can take this Andy wanker to a Bad Religion show and teach him a thing or two about how to treat the ladies."

"Can't you just go punch him in the face for me?"

"Would if I could. Chip," Spike reminds her. "But if there's one thing I've learned about Summers women, it's that they're more than capable of taking care of themselves."

Buffy never knew that Spike gets cold easily, compared to other vampires – a fact which he goes to great lengths to hide beneath his leather duster and high tolerance for discomfort. He doesn't shiver the way that humans do unless he is seriously weakened by injury or starvation, and nobody but Dawn pays enough attention to him to notice that he gravitates towards the warmest spot in any room – the fireplace, the heating vent, the least drafty corner of his crypt. He has commandeered Buffy's old down comforter as his own for the nights he stays over to watch her, and no one in the house is cruel enough to argue with him.

Buffy never knew that Spike has nightmares. Many of them are about her death, and many others are about things that Dawn isn't sure she wants to know too much about. His mother. The Initiative. Angelus. He wakes up wild-eyed or tear-streaked or game-faced or all of the above, and none of them but Dawn have the balls to get near him, much less the heart. Spike can't hurt you if he wants to, but he can if he doesn't – the chip will not fire when he lashes out purely in fear, because the Initiative did not believe that hostile sub-terrestrials have emotions. Xander learned this the hard way, but that doesn't stop Dawn from sitting close to him in the aftermath and letting her pulse and breath and body heat do the talking for her. _I'm here. I'm alive. I see you, and I'm with you, and I'm not scared of you – just for you. Because you're my friend._ He won't always let her touch him, but he has never once tried to bite her.

Buffy never knew that Spike can slip into bed beside a fourteen year old girl, kiss her chastely on the forehead with cool, closed lips and hold her in his arms all night and _wait _– because all he has is time, and Dawn will only grow older with it. She never knew that sometimes Spike doesn't want sex or blood or death – he just wants to be close for a while, and quiet. His hair is all baby soft curls without the gel, and he falls asleep faster when Dawn plays with it, or traces one of those razorblade cheekbones with her thumb over and over again. Maybe Buffy knew that vampires aren't really cold, just tepid, and that if you snuggle up to one all night they're as warm as you are by morning – or maybe she just thought that it was because of Angel's soul, like everything else that didn't happen to be thoroughly evil about Angel. Spike doesn't much seem to need a soul or a chip, either way. Neither one makes him breathe in his sleep, or show up night after night to help out.

Buffy never knew that Spike's eyes are blue – clear, simple blue – or that he can love clearly and simply and without being a dick about it, if you give him half a chance.

This is how Dawn and Spike spend their summer.


	5. the 27 club

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, Scene v**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes: **Starts directly after the final scene of_ The Gift_, and goes off-canon from the middle of _Bargaining, Part 2. _What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful...?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. A brand new Big Bad wants a piece of all that shiny green energy. When a secret society sets their sights on Dawn, their struggle to handle Life After Buffy turns into a quest to keep their promises to her alive. From Sunnydale to Tokyo, it's the journey that counts, not the destination. Chapter 2 of a much larger piece.

**Author's Notes:** Part 1, Chapter 5 of 10. So of course, as soon as I start to post this monster of a story somewhere, I suddenly realize that everything works better if I rearrange the chapters. The old chapter 2 is now the new chapter 3, the old chapter 3 is now the new chapter 4. Chapter 5 is brand spankin' new, and will hopefully remain chapter 5 forever.

**Chapter Warnings: **Sex, drugs, and dead rockstars.

**Dedications: **For Paola, who broke me of my irrational prejudice and created a monster. Team Spike Forever, girlie; this one is all for you.

* * *

**Act I, scene v:** the 27 club

"How old were you when you died?" she asks him, one afternoon in the crypt. The summer is hot and sticky and things keep trying to kill her, which means that there aren't many places she could go even if she wanted to – except for here, of course. Dawn is always welcome here. She hops up on the lid of a sarcophagus and watches Spike mix Rice Krispees into a mug of blood.

There is a system, she has noticed, to how he does this – a precise blood-to-cereal ratio that he seems to aim for. "Older than you," he replies, focused on the task at hand.

"Duh." Dawn rolls her eyes. "How much older than me?"

"Enough."

"Enough to do what?"

"Enough to not have to answer stupid questions like this." Spike isn't actually irritated, just distracted – after a century and a half of being the Big Bad, confrontational sarcasm is his default response to basically everything. He shakes about ten more Rice Krispees out of the box and inspects the results.

"Whatever." Dawn lies down on the sarcophagus and puts her book bag behind her head as a pillow, spreading her hair out behind her the way she imagines that a queen's hair would lie. "I was, like, a hundred zillion years old before I became fourteen nine months ago – so actually, I'm older than you, anyway."

Spike is quiet for a long time after that, but she doesn't mind; the crypt is a peaceful place to be this afternoon, cool and quiet and utterly free of the typical social conventions that govern most friendships. Conversations don't have to have clear beginnings and ends, here. She stares up at the grave dust dancing in a thin shaft of sunlight and listens to him bang around in his makeshift kitchen for a while, and nobody speaks again until he finally says, "Just for the record, I remember you. I know that it doesn't count for shit in the grand scheme of things - but as far as I remember, you've always been here." He pauses to let that sink in before he adds, "And the way I remember it, you've always been younger than me."

Strangely, this is one of the most comforting things that Dawn has ever heard. She shuts her eyes and relaxes against the cool granite lid of the sarcophagus. "That's the way that I remember it, too," she admits – because after all, it's just her and Spike. "So that's what I'm going with." She straightens her back, and folds her hands across her chest in an X, fingers stiff and perfectly aligned with her shoulders. Like an ancient lord or lady on a sarcophagus, or maybe a mummy in a pyramid. "I'm turning fifteen this year. On December 13th. I want a Discman, and a cute new pair of heels, and a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and fifteen candles on it. I mean, why not? I've got nothing else to do with my life – I might as well grow up."

_The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me._

The hardest thing in this world, Dawn thinks, is being an orphan about to start her freshman year of high school, who can't even answer a simple question like 'how old are you?' accurately with anything less than a fucking thesis paper. But she's doing her best. "Do vampires celebrate their birthdays?" she asks Spike without opening her eyes.

"Some of us." From the sound of his voice, he is in his favorite chair – probably with one leg slung over the arm of it and his mug resting on his knee, if Dawn knows Spike. Which she does, of course. She knows almost nothing _about_ him, including his age or his birthday, but she knows _him_ – is familiar with his habits and used to his routines and growing more comfortable with his nature by the day. "Dru was always big on birthday parties. We had a great little shindig for her right here in Sunnydale, couple years back. I got her that soul-sucking demon that she'd been talking about for ages, and it almost killed Peaches." He sounds fondly reminiscent, like anyone else looking back on a happy memory.

"I remember that. The Judge, right? It almost killed…" _Buffy_ "…everyone else, too." Here in Spike's crypt, they can talk about anything and anyone – except for her. They said it all with a look the first night, on Buffy's grave – to talk about it now would only confuse the silent but comfortable understanding they already have. It would mean conversations with clear beginnings and endings, and defining feelings that are still raw and blurred and changing by the minute. Both of them prefer to let Buffy haunt them in peace for now, the ghost in the room whenever they are together. "A soul-sucking demon," she muses. "Is that, like, a traditional gift or something?"

"Nah. You only spring for one of those to impress a bird or show off for the neighbors."

"So what's a typical vampire birthday present, then? Like, what kind of stuff did Drusilla get for you?"

"Oh, you know – whiskey, smokes, virgins. The usual."

Dawn wrinkles her nose. "Ew, ew, and _totally_ not even going there. How about a new dog chain and a bottle of that no-chip nail polish, instead? That stuff, I can stea—afford."

Spike, who has stolen everything from nail polish to cars to a couple of lesser crown jewels, doesn't comment on her slip. "You planning on showering me with gifts?"

"Sure. You're getting stuff for me. Discman, remember? If you won't tell me when your birthday is, I'll just make one up for you." She abandons her mummy pose and rolls onto her stomach, propping her chin up in her hands and considering him. He is sitting just how she knew he'd be sitting, draped lithe and careless across his chair, like a big cat at rest in it's den. "Something in the summer," she decides. "You're definitely a Leo."

One of his eyebrows – the scarred one – ticks up. "Definitely?"

"Betcha five bucks."

The smile is playful, but his eyes are still calculating; he may be getting used to dealing with money, but acquaintance hasn't made him any less opportunistic about it. Also, he really, really likes winning. "You actually got the five bucks?"

"Of course I do. You think I'd bet you something I didn't have? I know you better than that."

Spike tilts his head in the way that he always does when he's considering something or someone from a new angle, and for a long moment he just looks at her. Dawn looks back, relaxed and unblinking.

"Aquarius," he finally tells her, and holds out a hand. "February 17th, 1853. Pay up."

"February 17th," Dawn repeats. She hops down from the sarcophagus and rummages through her school bag for her wallet. "Same day as Billie Joe Armstrong."

"That bloke from Green Day?"

"Yeah. Him."

Spike nods approvingly. "Put on a bloody good show, they do." He watches her stack notebooks and math worksheets and brightly colored pens next to the decorative skull on his end table. "How old is Billie Joe Armstrong, then?"

Dawn forks over her last five dollar bill. "I dunno. He was born in 1972, I think, so… twenty-nine, maybe?"

"Oh." He sounds vaguely disappointed. "Too late for him to join the club."

"What club?"

"The 27 Club." Spike lights a cigarette. "That's the age when all the best rockstars die."

"Really? Like who?"

"Like Brian Jones, back in '69." When Dawn's face remains blank, Spike rolls his eyes. "Founder of the Rolling Stones? Found dead in a swimming pool; official cause of death – 'misadventure'. Next came Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin in '70, one right after the other – Jimi choked on his own vomit, Janice overdosed on booze and smack." Buffy used to make Dawn cover her eyes whenever she had to kill something, and Willow still doesn't allow anyone to talk about sex in front of her. Janice won't watch The Ring with her because she thinks it will be too scary. Only Spike will talk to her like an adult about sex and drugs and dead rockstars, and being a magical key from another dimension. "Then it was Jim Morrison in '71 – overdosed and died in a bathtub. There were others, too – Robert Johnson, Ron McKernan – but the myth faded into legend for years, until Kurt Cobain shot himself in 94', and Kristen Pfaff OD'd a few months later. All of them, dead at twenty-seven."

"Wow." Dawn thinks about it. Only twenty-seven years of being who you think you are, and then… well, who knows what happens next? Buffy does. Dawn doesn't. "That… kind of sucks."

Spike shrugs, and flicks the ash off of his cigarette. "It's not such a bad age to die," he tells her.

She is about to argue with him, until it clicks, and she finds herself just looking at him instead. Here in the crypt, it is not rude to stare. He looks just like he always does, when he's lounging around on a hot summer day – black tee shirt, black jeans, messy hair, bare feet. The bones of them are long and graceful, and his toenails are painted black, thanks to Dawn. Twenty-seven. She tries to make the number stick to him, somehow – tries to see the timeless predator she calls her best friend as a twenty-seven year old human being, and can't. All she sees is Spike.

"Kurt said that it's better to burn out than fade away," she muses. She starts stuffing school supplies back into her bag, and a couple of pink and orange pens roll off of the table. Spike swings his leg down from the arm of chair and leans down to pick them up for her.

"Actually, Neil Young said it first." He drops the pens into her bag with a hand as cool as the granite sarcophagus lid. Dawn thinks about Buffy, who never even made it to twenty-seven. Who never even graduated college. Who is dead now, just like Kurt and Jimi and Janice, and who-knows-how-many other shooting stars that burned too brightly to last. She'd never know about Spike, if he'd ended up the same kind of dead as the rest of them, instead of the kind of dead that still looks like a twenty-seven year old man a hundred and fifty years later.

"Fuck!" The sudden, sharp cry startles Dawn back to reality. "Passions started ten minutes ago!" Spike scrambles out of the chair and launches into a frantic search for the remote, cursing under his breath. "Fuck. Shit. Now Rita's probably already discovered Jeremy's secret identity, and told bloody Delilah about it, and—fuck!"

_Is this how he does it? _Dawn wonders, watching him flip over chair cushions and peer under skulls. _By just _doing_ it, minute to minute, for a hundred and fifty years? Is the secret to living on through loss after loss after loss really as simple as a fucking Nike slogan? _The remote control is under his beloved coat – Spike lets out a "Ha!" of triumph, and aims it at the TV like a drawn weapon. On the screen, Jeremy and Rita start bickering mid-sentence. _He's going to throw a freaking hissy fit if Delilah breaks up with Jeremy over this. Everyone he has ever loved is dead, and he doesn't even have a soul, and he still has it in him to care about this stupid TV show more than half the housewives in America combined._

Spike sprawls back out in his chair, and uses his cigarette to gesture to the characters. "Look. See there? What did I tell you; bitch can't keep her mouth shut to save her life. Watch, now – guaranteed, she'll try to cry her way out of this."

Dawn is pretty sure that life isn't going to get any easier – but here in the crypt, at least it can be simple.

She watches.


	6. aurora borealis

**The Caliban Chronicles: Act I, scene vi**

**Pairing:** Spike & Dawn friendship for now, with Spike/Dawn romance down the road eventually.

**Rating:** PG-13. For now.

**Episodes:** Starts directly after the final season of The Gift, and goes off-cannon from the middle of Bargaining, Part 2. What if Buffy's resurrection wasn't successful…?

**Summary:** Dawn lost a lot more than her sister on top of that tower, and Spike fell a lot farther than 50 feet. Both of them made promises to Buffy. On the road to redemption, it's the journey that matters, rather than the destination.

**Author's Notes:** Part 1, Chapter 6 of 10(?) This chapter is nearly as long as all the others combined, and it's also my first attempt at some Whedon-style Big Bad action. I'm really hoping for some honest feedback; while this story has had quite a few views, I've gotten very few comments from the people reading it, which leaves me in the dark as to whether I'm on the right track or not. Constructive criticism is heartily appreciated.

**Chapter Warnings: **Strong language and** c**opious plot evolution.

**Dedications:** For Bill, who would be thrilled to know that I named a demon chicken after him. See you on the other side, my friend.

* * *

**Act I, scene vi:** aurora borealis

When a Dziemiera demon launches itself off the top of a crypt and tries to peck her eyes out with its needle-sharp beak, Dawn doesn't give it a second thought. After all, this is Sunnydale. She screams, scrambles backwards, puts a headstone between her and the beast and lets Spike have his fun for the evening. For all their speed and pointy bits, Dziemieras basically amount to oversized demon chickens with horns; both Spike and Dawn already know this, thanks to the one that did exactly the same thing last week.

"Must be a nest of them somewhere nearby," Spike reasons afterward, pulling feathers out of his hair with bloody fingers. "I'll have Willow send the robot 'round tomorrow - it won't get bored hunting for the eggs." Everyone else calls it 'Buffybot'. Everyone else calls it 'her'. Spike calls it 'the robot', and won't look directly at it unless he has to; despite all of Willow's reprogramming, Buffybot retains a certain preoccupation with him, watching him when other people are talking and smiling brightly whenever he happens to glance her way.

The robot made Dawn sick the first time she saw it, but since then she's gotten used to it. Started thinking of it as a 'her' - but never as _her_. She may look and sound and smile and fight just like Buffy - may think she _is_ Buffy - but at the end of the day, she is nothing more than a high-tech toy with an identity crisis. She lies on Buffy's bed at night, with power cords plugged into her chest and her blank green eyes fixed placidly on the ceiling, and sometimes Dawn stands and looks at her from the doorway. Remembers the way that Buffy used to toss and turn in her sleep - how she used to kick Dawn when they bunked together on family vacations, or when Dawn climbed into her bed during thunderstorms. Remembers Mr. Gordo when he was still fluffy and new and they were both still little kids, and the way that Buffy wouldn't go to bed without him. Buffybot doesn't care where or when she recharges; she shuts down mid-sentence wherever you plug her in, with the blank calm of a catatonic mental patient.

"No," Dawn agrees, "She never gets bored."

When a Groxlar beast head butts its way through the back door of the Magic Box and comes at her roaring and slobbering, Willow stuns it with a burst of bright blue energy and Xander hacks it up with Giles' broadsword, and Dawn helps clean up the blood before getting back to her summer reading. Her ninth grade English teacher assigned them a book review of _The Catcher In The Rye_ due on the first day of class, and even though Dawn doesn't care about her grades the way she used to, it's a good story. She doesn't worry about where the Groxlar beast came from. After all, this is Sunnydale.

"That's strange." On the other side of the table, Willow is poring over some book that Dawn is not allowed to look at.

"What's strange?" she asks, because Tara is upstairs in the restricted section looking for who-knows-what, and Anya is busy counting the money.

"According to this book, Groxlar demons are extremely aggressive, but they tend to have one track minds - and only one thing they care about."

"Which is…?"

"Babies." Willow scans the page as she talk. "It says here that they bite the heads off babies, and are mostly known for attacking nurseries."

"Pleasant." Dawn turns a page in her own book.

"I wonder what it was doing here?" Willow muses.

"Maybe it was just vacationing on the Hellmouth, and stopped in for a souvenir."

"I don't think so." A part of Willow's sense of humor died with Buffy. Her eyebrows furrow at something on the next page, and she reaches for another book. "There's no mention of them having anything to do with magic - they're a patrilineal species divided into eight major warring tribes, but they spend most of their time fighting with each other over the best hunting grounds. There's no reason for it to come barging into the shop like that…"

"Did you find anything…?" Tara is back with an armload of books and dust clinging to the hem of her skirt.

"I think so - or rather, it's what I didn't find that's interesting. Check this out…" The two of them study the first book, then the next one, and Dawn goes back to reading about Holden Caufield's failures with girls, and wishing her problems were as simple as getting expelled from high school.

It's when the monks come that Dawn starts to wonder. They come in the black of night, when the whole house is asleep - save for Spike, who has been downstairs watching something on a cable channel he can't get in his crypt. Dawn is dreaming of things other than Buffy when a cold, hard hand clamps itself over her mouth and presses her head back into the pillow, muffling her initial shriek to an ineffectual squeal. Her eyes fly wide open in the darkness, and she pulls in a desperate breath through her nose - smells cigarette smoke and leather and grave dust, and garlic from the pizza they all shared earlier. Spike, holding her down until she stops flailing, watery moonlight frosting the tips of his white-blond hair.

"Don't. Say. A word," he whispers, crouching beside her bed with a hand still firmly settled over her mouth. "Not a sound, you got me?"

Dawn nods as best she can, and Spike takes his hand away. "Don't sit up," he warns her. "Just slide out of bed, stay as low as you can, and come with me."

She does as she's told, slithering out from under the blankets and onto the soft, dark purple carpeting. The night is warm, and she's not wearing much - just an old tank top and a pair of soft cotton shorts. Dawn feels around on the floor under her bed for a sweatshirt and manages to snag one before Spike tugs her towards the door. The two of them crawl into the small antechamber that connects Dawn's room with the master bedroom and the hall.

"Spike," she hisses, even though he told her to be silent. "What the hell is going on?"

"If I knew what the hell was going on, we wouldn't be playing Mission Impossible at three in the morning," Spike tells her, edging towards the door to the hallway with his back pressed against the wall. "There's something outside. A lot of somethings. Watching the house."

"What?" A cold shot of fear shoots down Dawn's spine and into her gut, where it sits like an ice cube. "What kind of somethings? Are they big? What do they want?"

"Shhhh!" He's peering surreptitiously around the door frame, towards the window at the end of the hall. "Whatever they are, I couldn't see them - but they're out there, and I get the feeling that they can see us. Stay where you are - I'm going to wake the witches."

He seems to disappear once he creeps into Willow and Tara's room - the witches sleep with their curtains tightly drawn, and there's no light to speak of. She sits huddled against the wall, staring at the darkened doorway until she hears the creak of bedsprings, followed in close succession by two muffled squeaks and the hiss of Spike's voice, whispering. Even from just a few feet away, Dawn can't make out his words - but a few moments later he slips back out of the shadows, crouched low and followed by Willow and Tara. The four of them huddle up in the little antechamber; Tara slips an arm around Dawn's shoulders, while Willow creeps to the hall door with Spike.

"Listen close," he hisses to her. "You hear them…?" For a moment, no one breathes; Willow is gripping Spike's shoulder for balance, her eyes somewhere far away.

"I hear it," she whispers. "Or rather, I feel them. "

"What are they?" Tara's eyes are wide, and her hand is clammy on Dawn's arm.

"No idea," Spike admits. "But whatever they are, something tells me that they haven't just dropped in for a cuppa and a chat. After all, this is Sunnydale."

"Can you kill them?" asks Dawn, who doesn't feel anything except for the butterflies in her stomach.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not even sure how many there are out there."

"We need a protection spell." Tara looks at Willow, and their eyes meet in the half-dark. "Maybe they don't know that we know that they're there, yet. This might be our only chance."

Spike draws back from the doorway. "Glinda's got the right of it, I think. Buy us some time to do a little reconnaissance of our own. Can you two work something that will let us in and out, but not them?"

"I could…" Willow sounds dubious. "It wouldn't be as strong as a full blown barrier spell - but it'll buy us a few minutes to work up a real one if we have to."

"Do it."

Dawn latches onto the sleeve of his duster in the dark, as Tara unwinds her arm from Dawn's shoulders to grasp hands with Willow. "Spike, you can't go out there. We don't even know what these things are, yet."

"Who do I look like, John Wayne?" Spike lays a hand over hers. "No one is going anywhere for the moment - if all they do is watch, well and good for them. Forewarned is forearmed. But until we know what we're dealing with, we best keep our options open."

Willow and Tara are chanting in a whisper, Tara's cardigan thrown over their clasped hands to mask the light from the spell. Dawn looks at Spike in the faint amber glow, all sleek hair and black leather. "Not John Wayne - James Dean. You're never careful like this. You think it's really that bad, whatever's out there…?"

"I'm never careful like this because_ I_ don't have to be," Spike explains. "But taking care of myself and taking care of you require two entirely different skill sets."

_Because you're not The Slayer. _Dawn bites her lip. _Because you're not Buffy. She could go out there with him and fight by his side, and you need a monster to protect you from the other monsters._

Spike's hand tightens over hers. "Hey. Look at me." When she does, he is looking back, blue eyes sharp and soft all at once - and Dawn remembers those same eyes, stricken in the moonlight and locked with hers in the moment before Doc dropped him over the edge of the tower. "I've got you. Whatever they are - whatever happens next - I've got you. Stick close to me and do what I say, and this'll all turn out right as rain, yeah?"

Willows eyes are closed in concentration, but one of Tara's cracks open to glance at them; Dawn catches it in her peripheral vision, but she doesn't break Spike's gaze to glance back. She squeezes his arm. "Yeah. Okay. So what do we do now?"

"Like I said - reconnaissance." There is a dim amber flash from beneath Tara's cardigan, and some indefinable ripple in the air that gives Dawn goosebumps as it washes over her. The witches open their eyes, and Willow gives them the thumbs up.

"Done. I threw in a little glamor there at the end," she admits. "Makes it harder for anything to see through the windows."

Spike gives an approving nod. "Good thinking. Gives me a chance to get a better look, without anything looking back."

"I'll sneak downstairs for some supplies," Willow volunteers. "There's this new identifier spell that I've been dying to try, but it takes a lot more than some chanting to pull it off."

"Nobody goes anywhere alone. Glinda, stick with your girlfriend and help her gather up all the necessities - including weapons. Dawn, you're with me. Let's see if we can't get a peep at these peeping toms." The way he says it makes it sound like he actually needs her help, but Dawn knows that her weak human eyes will be useless compared to his finely-tuned night vision. "Stay low, and stay quiet. We'll meet back here when we've got what we need."

_He's getting used to this,_ Dawn thinks, creeping across the floor of Buffy's old room alongside him to peer out the front windows. Yesterday, she watched from this very vantage point as Spike cracked a joke and Xander laughed, coming up the front path after a particularly grueling patrol. Last week, he helped Giles work out a few tricky lines of Fyaral in some ancient book. Tonight he doesn't even glance at Buffybot, with her glassy green doll eyes and her exposed control panel blinking away._ We are all getting used to this. _The windows are closed, but Dawn can still smell the rain coming. Beyond the glass, she sees nothing but shadows.

Spike, however, is looking into the darkness across the road with the calm, still intensity of a lion who has just spotted a particularly tasty gazelle. "That's right, you bastards," he murmurs, as though coaxing a frightened animal. "Come on out and have a closer look, you know you want to…"

"Who? Where? I can't see…"- but then she can; Dawn falls silent as a dozen or so figures darken the darkness of the driveways across the street, gliding forward in smaller groups and lingering between the houses. All the neighbors have turned out their porch lights, and it's impossible for her to make out more than their general shape - tall and humanoid, wearing some sort of cloaks.

"They look like men," she whispers to Spike. "Men, or vampires."

"They're not." Spike has not so much as blinked.

"How do you know?"

"I'm a vampire. I just know."

Dawn is about to harry him further, when one of the creatures detaches itself from its pack and slips down the driveway alone - but before it reaches the sidewalk, the tall, cloaked figure is gone, and a low-slung shadow is emerging from between two parked cars.

"What the hell is that?" Dawn squints. "A dog?"

"A shape shifter," Spike whispers, as the dog-like figure pads into the street - bigger than a doberman, but of much the same build, with eyes that reflect a flat orange gleam in the faint glow thrown by their own porch light. "Not a sort that I'm familiar with, though." His left hand twitches, fingers flexing unconsciously as though itching to wrap themselves around some shape shifting throats, and Dawn can't help but smile a little; whatever these dog men are, they're something that he thinks he can hit.

A quiet bump and a little creak from the top of the stairs alert them to Willow and Tara's return. The former is struggling under the weight of half a dozen spell books and a small chest of supplies, while the later wields a hand axe, a flail, and a small scimitar. "We brought some extra, just-in-case stuff," Willow explains unnecessarily. "You know, just in case."

"Shhh!" Spike waves them all lower, as the creature lowers its muzzle to the ground and sniffs its way across the street to slink along the edge of the lawn. For a long moment, none of them move; Tara and Willow huddle in the hallway, Dawn crouches low next to Spike, and the dog sniffs furtively at the base of one tree, then the next. There is something disproportionate about it - the legs seem too long, the spine too flexible, but it toes the line between light and shadow too closely for Dawn to get a clear look. "Red," Spike hisses. "C'mere. Tell me what you see."

Obligingly, Willow sets down the books and creeps over to the windows, peeking over the sill beside Dawn. "I see a… thing. A dog…? A… shadow… dog - wait, no, a hell hound?" Like they're playing Pictionary instead of trying to identify demons. "But it moves all funny…"

"It's some sort of shape shifter." Spike hasn't taken his eyes off the creature as it tests the perimeter of the yard; the porch light glints off hints of strong muscles and sleek black fur, but it seems to know exactly how close to the house it can venture without exposing itself in earnest. "There are more of them across the road, hiding out in the neighbors' driveways - or so they think."

"So they don't know we're watching them…?" Tara is hanging back, using Buffy's closet door as a shield while she feels her way through the contents of the magic box, sorting vials and talismans and bundles of herbs by touch alone.

"I don't think so - if they did, why would they send over a scout to sniff around?"

"Can we figure out what they are?" Dawn asks the witches. "There's got to be something in one of those books about shape shifting dog men in cloaks, right?"

"Of course there is." Willow has never lost her faith in books. "If I had… say… a couple of hours, then yeah - easy-peasy."

"See what you can do with a couple of minutes." Spike is tracking the dog-like shadow with the calm, clear precision of a sniper as it retreats, padding back across the road with an odd, loping gate. Dawn strains her eyes against the darkness, trying to see what he sees by sheer force of will until bright splotches of purple and green cloud her vision. She can hear Willow rustling pages behind her, smell the herbs in Tara's supply box. Outside, the first raindrops rustle the leaves in the trees and spatter onto the sidewalk.

It's an odd kind of peace for an odd sort of moment. Dawn shuts her eyes and breathes in rain, herbs, leather, Buffy's perfume - all the scents of home.

_We are all getting used to this._

"Balls," says Spike, with an irritated sort of resignation. "Never mind the books, Red - hand me that scimitar."

When Dawn opens her eyes, they are coming; the shadows lingering in the driveways have coalesced into thirteen tall, slim figures on the sidewalk, all alike in height and dress. Spike's left hand flexes as they pick their way between the cars with uniform precision; a moment later Willow slips the blade into it, and his fingers close blind but sure around the handle. Only Dawn is close enough to see the tick of a smile at the corner of his mouth, or the golden glint in his eye as the first of the creatures crosses the threshold of the lawn and steps into the light.

What she took for a cloak is actually some sort of robe, with a deep, cowled hood and an orange insignia sewn into the breast of it. Dawn expects a death mask inside of of the hood, or at least something hideous, but the features she can make out from this height are those of a man - olive-skinned and clean-shaven, with eyes that seem to glow with the same flat, reflective orange light as the dog's eyes did. The rest of his companions fan out around him, until they're arced across the lawn in a semi-circle. Without preamble, they lift their hands and begin to chant - low-toned and layered and eerie, but too soft for her to make out the words.

Spike arches an eyebrow at the scene below, clearly unimpressed, while Willow cocks her head and listens. "…Definitely not Latin… or Greek… it almost sounds like Gaelic - maybe a really old version…?"

Dawn - who doesn't speak Latin or Greek or Gaelic - listens closer. "Maybe they're some weird kind of Druids, or something…?"

"Could be… if I could get a closer look at those insignias…"

"Oh, bugger this." Spike rolls his eyes, and tests the weight of the scimitar. "I'm going to go check and see if they die." It was only a matter of time, Dawn knew, before it came to this; he may be smart enough to exercise caution with the unknown, but he isn't patient enough to sustain it when faced with something that he can swing at. "Gear up the 'bot in case I need backup, would you Red?"

Willow looks dubious. "Are you sure this is a good idea…?"

"Better than sitting around and letting them finish whatever it is they're starting out there." Spike squeezes Dawn's shoulder. "Spot me, 'Bit," he tells her - and then he's a moving shadow, too, slipping away from the window and vanishing into the hall with nothing but a whisper of leather on carpet. She turns back to the window, gripping the sill as Tara crawls up beside her and Willow check Buffybot's power levels.

_He can handle it,_ she tells herself. _He wouldn't go down there unless he knew he could handle it. _The rain is starting to pick up, drops darkening the front path, but the monks chant on. _He's smart - he'll be careful, sneak out through the back door and hit them from the shadows_—

"—Oi! You there!" Dawn never heard the front door open, but now it bangs shut with enough force to rattle the windows downstairs a bit, and a pair of heavy boots clomp down the porch steps. Spike walks like a man twice his own size, and the coat only lends credence to the swagger, flaring out to make him appear larger than life. "Private property, gents - shove off and take your caroling somewhere else."

The chanting stops abruptly, and thirteen sets of orange eyes level on the vampire and his scimitar. Dawn takes the opportunity to crack the window a bit; outside, the night air crackles with the sharp scent of ozone. Spike swings the blade down from his shoulder. "One more time then, for those deaf kids in the back." She has only a spare quarter-view of his profile, but even from this angle she can see subtle shift in bone structure as he melts into game face. "Piss. Off."

The monk in the middle tilts his head beneath the cowl. "Vampire. Young, but strong. Soulless. Why are you here, at the home of the Slayer?"

"I could ask you lot the same question."

"You should not be here." The monk has a voice like an empty tomb, smooth and hollow. "You were not summoned."

"Whereas you lot have got… what? Engraved invitations?"

"We come to bear witness. The Seventh Hell shall rise where six have fallen. It is written."

It is written," the other twelve confirm in unison.

Spike smirks. "Must have missed the memo."

"The forge must be lit before the blood moon rises. Why does one such as you seek to hinder us in our work?"

"Because you're doing it on my bloody lawn at three in the morning."

"This is not your lawn."

"More mine than yours - now get the fuck off of it, 'fore I'm obliged to mulch you up and spread you under the azalea bushes." Dawn can't see his eyes from here, but she knows exactly what he's doing - sizing them up before he swings, looking for the weakest link.

The middle monk is a head taller than him, and his face is cast in shadows as he looks down at Spike. "The gods are falling and the devils are rising, Vampire. The fires of the Seventh Hell cannot be quenched with the blood of a demon."

"How about the blood of a dozen or so monks?" Spike counters. "Not that I have any bloody clue what you're on about - but I'm itching to try out this scimitar."

"Strong words. Strong heart. You will die for those who lie within?"

"Not tonight," Spike assures him - and buries his blade in the throat of the monk to his left, without so much as a glance. Blood sprays across the front path, and a ghostly, gurgling howl rises from the ruined throat of his victim.

On the bed, Buffybot sits bolt upright. "Good morning, Willow. Why is it dark outside?"

Down on the lawn, all hell has broken loose; Dawn catches the flash of Spike's blade, clashing with one of the long, needle-like daggers the monks have pulled from their robes. Two of them have shifted into the same sort of dog-like beast that came scouting earlier, lunging through the legs of their comrades, but Spike won't let them surround him - he whirls, ducks, strikes out with a sharp kick that catches one of the dogs full in the face and whips the scimitar up to block another strike from a dagger.

"It's still night. Don't worry. Buffy, Spike needs your help."

"Spike?" Her dead sister's voice floods with concern. "Spike needs help? What happened? Tell me where he is - I'll save him."

"He's downstairs. Outside. He needs your help fighting some shape shifters."

"No problem! I'm really good at fighting," Buffybot assures them, as Spike deflects a dagger with his off hand and comes in low with the scimitar; two of the monks are down and still, and a third is struggling futilely to rise, but it's still ten to one, and his only advantage is a longer blade.

"Take these." Willow gives Buffybot the weapons. "Go. Spike needs you."

Dawn's knuckles are as white as the windowsill, and she can hear Tara's heavy breathing next to her. Two of the monks have drawn back from the fight to flank their leader, and seem to be chanting again under their breath. Three more come at Spike as a team; he spins out of the reach of the first one, but the second one drives his dagger forward beneath the leather duster and pulls it back bloody. Dawn remembers the gleam of moonlight on the blade of Doc's knife as he slid it into Spike's back, and muffles a cry with her hand. _He'll be fine, he'll be fine - he can't fall this time…_

"Hey! You! You get away from Spike!" Buffybot has then ax in one hand and the flail in the other as she storms down the front steps to join the fray. Watching her fight from this distance, Dawn can almost pretend that it is really Buffy out there - Buffy and Spike, fighting back to back as another wave of monks swoops in on them.

With the need for silence suspended, Tara and Willow have sprung into action behind her. "Raven's feathers… marigold root… a deflection spell, maybe?" Tara sounds calm, but Dawn knows that she isn't. The scent of ozone has grown thicker in the air, and the two chanting monks have lifted their hands, a soft, pale green glow gathering in their palms; Dawn wants to shout to Spike, but neither he nor Buffybot can afford a moment's distraction.

"Hurry up," she tells the witches instead. "Two of them are—"

The flash precedes the blast by only fraction of a second; Dawn has just enough time to throw herself to the floor before the windows explode above her. The house shakes to its very foundation, and bits of plaster rain down from the ceiling. Dawn rises to her hands and knees, slashing her palm on a shard of broken glass, and peers through the wreckage of the window to find Spike struggling back to his feet, the right side of his face painted in blood. Two of the monks rush him before he can rise - but Buffybot cuts down one with a sharp blow to the back of his neck, and Spike splits the other open from sternum to pubic bone with the scimitar. The fight has been trimmed down to six on two, but the pair of monks standing back near the sidewalk are gearing up for another blast at the house, and neither vampire nor robot are in a position to stop them.

"Dawn, stay down!" Tara rarely shouts, and something about her raised voice chills Dawn to the bone. A moment later a hand locks around her wrist, yanking her back from the broken remnants of the window. Willow is back on her knees in the mess of broken glass and plaster, palms upturned and eyes shut, chanting under her breath. Dawn makes a grab for her, but Tara pulls her towards the door. "It's okay - she's okay - she knows what she's doing."

"It didn't work," Dawn says stupidly. "The protection spell, it didn't work…"

"Yes it did," Tara's voice is tight as the two of them tumble into the hallway. "I don't think we'd have a house left if it didn't. Come on - we've got to get downstairs before they hit us again."

"But Willow—"

"—is the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. We've got to trust her. Now_ come on_." There is some sort of toneless thrum in the air, a note too low to be a note at all, but Dawn doesn't know if it's a result of Willow's work, or the monks'. She follows Tara down the stairs, smearing blood down the railing of the stairs wherever she grips it for balance. The house is dark, save for the TV, which is still tuned to the channel Spike was watching - an hour ago, a lifetime ago; Dawn can't be sure anymore.

_He'll be fine, he'll be fine, he can't fall, he'll be fine_… Not being able to see the battle is a hundred times worse than watching it helplessly from a window. Dawn can tell herself anything she wants, but she doesn't _know -_ he could be bleeding, burning, already dust on the front path…

Buffy's old weapons trunk still sits against the far wall of the living room; Dawn makes a beeline for it before Tara can stop her, wrenches open the lid and plunges her hands inside and nearly impales one on a stake before it closes around the crossbow at the bottom. She has never killed anything in her life - has never even _held_ a crossbow - but the walls are vibrating and the air is crackling and outside, Spike is shouting something that could be _watch out_ or _fuck you_ or _help me_. She jerks the lever back, hands trembling, and loads up an arrow the way it seems like an arrow should go.

Tara grabs her arm. "Dawn, you can't - you can't go out there."

"I _have_ to." Dawn sets her jaw and pulls her arm away, as a shudder runs through the house. There is a sharp hissing sound like a steam leak, followed by a bang and a chorus of shouts from the front law. "He would do it for me."

Tara jerks her around by both shoulders. "He _is_ doing it for you, Dawn. You know that. I know that; I may not trust him completely, but I do trust my own eyes. Are you really going to put yourself at risk, when he's out there risking everything to protect you?"

Another flash of green light brightens the windows before she can argue, but instead of the beam-shaking impact of the first blast there is a deep, gong-like boom and a shiver from the house itself; Willow must have gotten another barrier spell up in time. Dawn scrambles onto the couch and jerks open the sheer curtains for a view of the yard. It's harder to see down here - the porch light leaves her night blind, and she can only make out the shadow of what's going on beyond the railing, but the monk's forces seemed to have dwindled considerably. She braces the crossbow on the back of the couch, and is considering whether or not to try shooting through the window at one of them, when a black-clad blur comes flying up the porch steps and hurtles into the door with enough impact to try its hinges. A moment later, Spike is stumbling into the living room - face bloody, right arm bent at an unnatural angle, but solid and breathing and steady on his feet.

"Dawn!" he shouts, a split second before she bowls into him, crossbow forgotten. Spike reels against the door frame and catches them both, pulling her in close with his good arm. "You're all right? You're bleeding.."

"I'm all right." Dawn clings to his coat, buries her face in it and breathes in the scent of leather and smoke and rain, and doesn't care a bit when she comes away with a bloody smear across her cheek. "It's just a little cut. Are _you_ all right? Where's Buffybot? What's _happening_ out there?"

"I'm fine," he assures her, still clutching her close with one arm but already moving, pulling deeper into the hall and away from the door. "Where are the witches?"

"I'm here." Tara's eyes are wide and her hands are scratched from the broken glass, but her voice is steady. "Willow's upstairs, maintaining the barrier."

"She's doing a hell of a lot more than that - whatever she hit them with just now turned the tides for us out there. The 'bot is chasing down the last of the lackeys - but their leader fucked off somewhere in all the confusion, and god only knows if he'll be back. Bloody hell, those bastards are strong." He's still holding the scimitar in his off hand, knuckles white around the handle.

"You're bleeding," Dawn points out. "And your arm looks like it's broken."

"It is. Couple of ribs, too - and one of those dogs nearly tore my leg off." He's still panting for breath that he doesn't really need, but there's laughter bubbling up in it. "Shape shifting dog monks. Who knew how much fun they would be?"

Tara looks away awkwardly, but Dawn can't help but smile. "More fun than Dziemiera demons, huh?"

"Not even comparable."

"Did it work…? It worked, didn't it!" Willow is stumbling down the steps, pale and flushed all at once. "I knew it would - well, I mean, I've never tried a disjunction spell on that scale before, so I didn't actually_ know…" _She slips on the second to last step, catches herself on the railing. "Whoever they are, they've got some serious power."

Tara catches Willow by the elbow and helps her down the last step. "Did you get a look at the symbol on their robes, Spike?"

"Round. Orange. Firey. Didn't really have much time to admire their wardrobes."

"Are the dead ones still out there?" Dawn asks.

Spike shakes his head. "They vanished when their leader did. The last of the cronies turned tail, and I sent the bot after them. How are you feeling, Red?" Stabbed, kicked, punched, beaten, caught in the shock wave of some spooky monk magic and spit back out again, he is still steadier on his feet than Dawn is - supporting her with his good arm and still wielding the scimitar in his broken one.

Willow drops down with her back against the wall. "Peachy keen," she assures him. "Never been better…"

"Wait here, baby - I'll get you some water." Tara presses a kiss to her girlfriend's forehead, and sets off low and careful for the kitchen - the night outside is quiet again, save for the sound of the rain, but all the fresh scents of the evening have been drowned beneath a layer of blood and ozone.

Spike pulls Dawn down with him as he crouches in front of Willow - gives her a long, steady look that is appraising, but far from unkind. "Little Red Riding Hood's got a few tricks up her sleeves for the big bad wolves, it would seem."

Willow smiles dizzily. "I like it when you make me sound all cool like that."

"Yeah, well, whatever you did back there was definitely cool. Thanks for having my back."

"Thanks for having our front. I don't suppose any of the evil dog monks happened to mention why they were trying to blow the house up, did they?"

Spike shrugs. "Their leader went on for a bit about seven hells and fires and forges - sounded like some sort of crazy cult gibberish to me."

'_The gods are falling and the devils are rising, Vampire.'_ Dawn swallows down the chill of unease it gives her. _Glory died. Buffy fell. I'm still here. _Tara is back, steadying the glass for Willow as she drinks and asking Spike about the monks' size, skin tone, fighting styles. _That Groxlar beast came straight for me in the Magic Box. Things have been trying to kill me all summer. _She can feel the blood seeping through her sweatshirt - not her own blood, but Spike's, soaking into the fabric where she's pressed against him. The damp, sticky patch has formed right over one of the thin scars that Doc left on her ribs._ Put me in the right place at the right time, and my blood can open a dimensional rift. What if that's not all it does? Monks have always known more about me than I did…_

"…We should hit the books," Willow is saying. "Do some research. Do you think it's safe to turn the lights on?"

"Pretty sure it's safe to throw a keg party at this point." Spike pauses, tilts his head as he thinks on that. "Actually, that's not the worst idea. I could use a drink, after all that. Rupert didn't happen to leave any of his scotch here, did he?"

_You are blowing all of this out of proportion,_ Dawn tells herself firmly. _You heard what Spike said. 'Crazy cult gibberish'. He wouldn't be looking for scotch if he thought you were in danger. _She leans a little more of her weight against him, and he adjusts his own balance effortlessly, steadying them both. "What you could use is a shower, and maybe some bandages. You're bleeding all over me," she informs him.

The back door opens and shuts with a bang. "Spike? I'm back! Where are you? I chased down those evil monks like you said…" Nothing in his expression changes at the sound of Buffybot's voice, but Dawn can feel the twinge of tension in him. A moment later, she emerges from the kitchen with a bloody flail and a bright smile. "There you are," she announces. "I chased down those evil monks like you said, and took the jellybeans right out of their crumpets. You're right - they're strong. Why do they turn into dogs sometimes?"

"That's a question for the witches," Spike tells the wall somewhere to Buffybot's right. "Dawn's right - if you don't mind, I should get cleaned up. Can't be bleeding all over the carpets all night."

"I'll put up another barrier spell," Tara volunteers. "Something more solid, now that we're all inside."

"I'll call Giles." Willow is starting to recover both her color and her determination. "I don't know whether it counts as too late or to early - but either way, I think he'll forgive me when he hears about this."

"I'll help Spike upstairs," Dawn volunteers. "I can clean up the mess while I'm at it."

"Be careful with the broken glass," Willow warns.

_A window just exploded inches above my head, _Dawn wants to point out, but she doesn't; Spike is helping her up as he rises himself, his arm tense around her and his jaw set tight. "I'll be careful."

And she is. She picks up the big pieces with her hand wrapped in a towel, and vacuums up the rest with a fresh vacuum bag while Spike is in the shower. She fluffs her dead sister's pillows for the robot who will lie here later. _'The gods are falling and the devils are rising.' Who cares? Some people get Jehovah's Witnesses ringing their doorbells, and we get dog monks chanting on the front lawn. After all, this is Sunnydale._

"Penny for your thoughts, 'Bit." Dawn nearly jumps out of her skin, whirling 'round with a squeak to find Spike standing in the doorway of Buffy's room, wearing an old tee shirt from The Bronze and a makeshift sling for his broken arm.

_It's just a coincidence._

_It's just your imagination._

_It's just the Hellmouth._

It's just her and Spike.

"The monks… Their energy… It was green. Just like me."

Spike doesn't tell her that it's just a coincidence, or her imagination, or that she's just being silly. Instead, he looks her over with the same sort of appraising look that he gave Willow earlier. "The Aurora Borealis is also green," he points out, "and 'aurora' means 'dawn' in Latin. Did the monks who made you name you Dawn on purpose, or is that just a fluke? You never know how things may be connected - but if you start worrying about every possibility, you won't have time for anything else. Wait and see how things play out, Niblet; may be as we never see the likes of them again."

"And if we do?"

"Then we cross that bridge when we come to it."

Beyond the broken windows, the rain is falling steadily, washing away the blood on the front path. Dawn takes a deep breath, then another. _We'll cross that bridge when we come to it._

"Aurora would have been a cooler name than Dawn," she tells Spike, as the first rumble of thunder rolls in from the distance.

* * *

(A/N: I started posting this story in the hopes of connecting with other authors to trade advice, constructive criticism, and maybe the occasional fangirly moment. In the past two days since I posted this chapter, this story has received over two hundred hits - and zero feedback. As an author, that's pretty disheartening. Praise, protests, questions, comments and constructive criticism are all highly appreciated - and if you link me to your work, I'll be more than happy to return the favor.)


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